In this review of The Spectacular Spider-Men #14, the Spider-Men go on a desperate search for Doctor Connors’ son!
THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MEN #14
Writer: Greg Weisman
Artist: Andrés Genolet
Main Cover: Mark Bagley
Variant Cover: Andrei Bressan
Page Count: 19 pages
Release Date: April 16, 2025
This Review Contains Spoilers
The Spectacular Spider-Men #14 begins with Doctor Connors still unconscious. Peter and Miles decide that Peter will try to wake him while Miles Subdues the Lizard. While they continue, Rickie visits Anna, who was told that she is expected to make a full recovery. Rickie admits she was afraid after Anna was hurt, but is now furious at her.
Back with the Lizard, Doctor Connors finally regains consciousness and begs the Lizard to stop fighting the Spider-Men so they can focus on finding Billy. The Lizard wants to go after the Electros, convinced they were lying about Billy’s escape, but the Spider-Men persuade him to let them find Billy first.
In the hospital, Rickie admits that she lashed out at Juliet because she was scared and angry, but she really should have been blaming Anna. She asks her why she would run outside to try to stop Super-villains and accuses her of being in love with Juliet.
Anna admits that she likes how much Juliet likes her and wants to be friends with her because Juliet is shy and lonely, but she loves Rickie. Rickie, happy with the answer, knows she will be told to leave by the nurses soon, but she lets in several of their friends who came to wish Anna well.
Meanwhile, the Spider-Men are led to the sewers by Shift, who find them as they swing through the city looking for Billy. It turns out that Billy is back in the sewers with the Enclave. Though Billy and Martha are startled to see the Lizard, Doctor Connors reassures them that the Lizard is helping him and that he’s family.
Billy explains how he got caught by the Electros and apologizes for sneaking out. Martha then explains that she asked Shift for help, and Shift got Vermin to sniff Billy out, and they were able to rescue him. Billy says that he doesn’t want to hide anymore and knows it’ll be hard being part lizard, but he wants to make it easier for people like him to exist in the future.
Doctor Connors promises they’ll make it work, and as the family embraces, the Lizard disappears into the shadows.
The Spider-Men return to the Coffee Bean, where Max explains what happened with Rickie and Juliet after they left. The others explain that they know Rickie feels bad about what she said, but no one can locate Juliet to tell her that. Doctor Sinclair, in particular, is worried that, with Juliet’s attachment to Anna, she may hurt herself if she blames herself for what happened to her.
Juliet is then shown standing in the ruins of the Arcadium with the destroyed Juliet robot at her feet.
Analysis
The Spectacular Spider-Men #14 opens with the fight against the Lizard, and it’s surprisingly anticlimactic. The fight began in the last issue, and it felt dynamic then. The characters were constantly in motion, and the various angles and dramatic lighting made it feel as though the fight was coming off the page. There is none of that in this continuation of the same battle.
The characters are mostly static, and gone are the creative poses and panels that made issue #13 come alive. Initially, I assumed that this was because the purpose of the fight in this issue was for the Spider-Men to subdue the Lizard instead of taking him down, but it quickly became clear that this was not just a problem in the fight scenes, but throughout the entire issue.
Most of the panels lack motion from the characters. Even when they are moving, it doesn’t feel like there is any weight behind their actions. They feel stiff and locked into position, like action figures instead of people. There is also nothing particularly interesting in any of the panels.
In the previous issue, angles were used to make the Lizard feel larger than life, and the lighting from things like the ambulance outside of the coffee bean and the moon shining into the warehouse enhanced the scenery. There is none of that in this issue. Even the sewer lighting feels plain with no lighting effects or creative use of shadows. With all of this, it’s easy to tell that art has undergone a heavy downgrade in this issue.
The story for The Spectacular Spider-Men #14 was enjoyable. I hope we don’t see the last of the Lizard, or else there will be an opportunity missed to draw a connection between the Lizard and characters like Billy, Shift, and the other members of the Enclave who work to be accepted. We’re coming up on the end of this arc, but I’d still like to see that connection be made.
While this section was enjoyable and Billy’s kidnapping needed to be concluded, this was also quite anticlimactic. Several issues ago, we saw Martha begging for help to find her Son to someone we couldn’t see, encased in shadows, and this issue promised Miles and Peter teaming up with an “unexpected ally,” just for both of them to be members of the Enclave. With so much secrecy, I was expecting someone we hadn’t seen yet, or some kind of surprise twist. Instead, this was the most likely of all the options.
The conversation between Anna and Rickie was one that sorely needed to be had. Until the last few issues, Rickie had barely been seen, and Anna needed to reaffirm her love for her girlfriend. However, putting this in after so much of the story has framed their conversations and meetings in a romantic light feels awkward.
Just one issue ago, Anna missed Rickie’s performance to hang out with Juliet and was running out in the middle of a fight between heroes and villains to try and help Anna, and in this one, she’s saying that she loves Rickie. While the conversation is good, I wish there had been more attempts throughout the arc to remind Juliet that she and Anna were just friends before Rickie stepped back into the picture, so that her declaration of love to someone other than Juliet felt less like a misdirection.
Despite the art downgrade in this issue, Rickie’s expressions come through beautifully. Her tears, anger, and the smile she gives Anna when she reaffirms her love stand out among the other, less detailed images.
When it comes to Juliet herself, I can’t help but wonder how they will wrap this up with her. Her story also highlighted a problem throughout this run: the imbalanced side characters. This run had a lot of side character plots. Juliet and her powers, the Electros’ feud, romance, and Billy’s kidnapping. All of these have had stretches where the Spider-Men were treated as side characters in their own story.
Now, this isn’t always a bad thing. There are plenty of good Spider-Man issues where the hero takes more of a backseat. These stories don’t seem as intertwined as they are. When the focus is on the Electros, Juliet is usually absent. When the focus is on Juliet, the Electros are gone. This time, when the focus is on Billy, the Electros don’t appear, and Juliet is only present for the final panel.
These stories have felt disconnected throughout the run to the point that when another character dealing with a different main problem appears during someone else’s moment, it feels more like a cameo than a choice, and this issue feels no different.
Final Thoughts
While The Spectacular Spider-Men #14 has a few good moments, the art does not reach the level of the previous issue, and the conclusions we get feel anticlimactic and rushed.
